Fast and furious: Life with LTE on an iPhone 5

One of the main reasons I wanted a new smartphone was to step up to LTE, the faster data connection offered by AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. I’ve been testing LTE on various review units since Verizon first launched the service back in late 2010, so I knew it could dramatically affect the experience of using a smartphone.

But there’s a big difference between working with test devices and having LTE native on your personal phone. And now that I’m carrying an iPhone 5 that connects to AT&T’s LTE network, I’m even more sold on it. If you’re a smartphone user, you want this — trust me.

After a week of living with LTE full-time, here are a couple of notes on life in the fast lane

• Data usage – There a presumption that, when you have a very fast data connection, and you’ll burn through your data cap quicker. That’s not true, if your net-access behavior remains unchanged – with one big caveat.

Yes, data gets delivered to your phone much faster. But if you mostly use your smartphone for everyday tasks – email, Web surfing, occasional navigation or apps – you won’t see your data usage change. The big exception is streaming video, because some services will send higher-quality video when they detect a faster connection. Netflix does this, for example.

If having a faster connection changes your data habits, then you could easily devour more data. Normally, I’d been using 800 MB to 1.2 GB a month on my iPhone 4 over a 3G connection. In the week since I got the iPhone 5, I’ve used 1.5 GB, mainly because my use of video has increased. I’ve been watching Netflix on the treadmill at the gym. I’ve also been running many speed tests at various locations to check LTE’s quality around town using the Speedtest.net app, and each test uses about 20 megabytes of data.

My billing period reset on Sept. 22, the day after receiving the phone, and I’ve used almost 1.1 GB since then, according to themyAT&T app.

I’ve got a grandfathered, unlimited data plan. AT&T says it will throttle LTE users after they hit 5 GB, and if my usage pattern doesn’t change in the next 3 weeks, I’m likely to hit that wall. We’ll see then just what throttled AT&T LTE feels like.

I suspect that, over time, I’ll settle back down to my old behavior, and I’ll stay under the cap most months.

• Speeds – Yes, LTE is fast. And when it’s used in combination with a very fast smartphone, the effect is fantastic. I’d suspected this when using the latest Android phones, such as the HTC One X or the Samsung Galaxy S III, which have very fast processors and graphics subsystems. But the iPhone 5 is faster than either of those, and when paired with LTE, the result is very impressive . . . particularly true for someone coming from an iPhone 4 on 3G.

As I wrote last weekend, I’m seeing jaw-dropping mobile data speeds even when signal strength is low. I’m also seeing great speeds under conditions that would normally kill a data signal. For example, check out the results of this speed test:

That test was done in a closed elevator in the Mighty Houston Chronicle’s parking garage. That’s right, 37 Mbps down, in a steel box that’s moving inside a reinforced concrete building filled with automobiles. Whoa.

Speeds have varied all over the map, but generally are excellent. For example, sometimes I’ll get test results better than the one above at my house – where I can look out my home-office window and see an AT&T tower – to about half that, depending on the time of day. But even 18 Mbps down is a great connection.

How about you? If you’ve got an LTE-capable smartphone – regardless of the platform – what kind of usage and speeds are you seeing? Let us know in the comments.